Annecy; Monday, 06 May, 2024

I had originally intended on visiting the Animation Museum as it was open on a Monday, and free to look around, but on pulling back the curtains it was pretty obvious that it was going to be a very wet morning, and it was a long slog up to the museum located beyond and below the Château.

Given checkout time was midday and my train back towards Geneva was 12:44 I, instead, just had a relaxing morning in my hotel room before checking out just on midday and trudging through the pretty relentless rain back to Annecy station.

Whilst the direct bus would have been the quicker option, and was less than 30 minutes earlier at 12:15, that would have meant I’d have been back at Geneva Airport more than four hours before my flight, so instead I decided to take the Léman Express back to Geneva.

The Léman Express is a collection of cross-border services running from the Geneva area into France operated by the French SNCF and the Swiss SBB-CFF-FFS, and whilst the bulk of the journey was in France you could easily imagine the journey was through Switzerland with the train taking a mountainous route, involving quite a big double back to get round some mountains.

I’m sure the views would have been even more impressive if half the scene wasn’t obliterated by cloud and pounding rain.

Back in Geneva it was a quick 6-minute connection onto the next train heading back out to the airport, allowing me to arrive less than three hours before my flight departed so I didn’t have to hang out in the airport for too long, helped by the fact the flight started boarding a good 40 minutes before departure.

It was a smooth flight back to London, despite the captain initially announcing that there was an air traffic restriction, and we might have to wait at the gate in Geneva for 30 minutes, but in the end that evaporated, and we pushed back on time from Geneva, reaching the gate at Heathrow a good 10 minutes ahead of schedule.